In this film, director Clint Eastwood peels back the veneer of warfare and reveals the awful underlying truth: “Soldiers fight for their country, but they die for their friends.” Reality and public perception are at odds throughout this saga of anti-heroism. The government needs to sell war bonds and it will manipulate its loyal soldiers and the media to achieve its ends. The substory of Native American Ira Hayes and his reluctant rise to fame as one of the flag-raisers of Iwo Jima is poignant. We can only choke back our disgust as he is abandoned to poverty and alcoholism by the powers that put him on display, befriended and remembered only by his comrades in arms. This is more than a war movie; it is an indictment of the political mechanism that mocks true valor and trivializes the tragedy of war.

A film about how people are used up and spat out by the war machine. Based on the true story of a propaganda photograph of five soldiers raising the US flag atop Mount Suribachi, Iwo Jima; a bloody and frightening battleground for both sides as Eastwood’s other film “Letters from Iwo Jima” illustrates. We see how our “heroes” are paraded in front of the public, much to their discomfort, to raise money for the war mongerers and when their use is over, they are left to fend for themselves in situations of poverty, trauma and racism.

Has many pertinent things to say about war, the state, and the breath-taking cynicism of those who make the decisions about who will live and who will die for peace.

i can’t even begin to imagine what it must be like to partake in any kind of combat. i am so thankful for the people who do. i am in awe of the brotherly love soldiers seem to get. in this movie particular how tramautic it must have been to go on a war bonds tour relieving the moment every day. the guilt, the flashbacks.